In 'The Abduction From the Seraglio,' Europeans Emerge Broadened and Deepened From an Encounter With Islam

In 1781, Mozart was fired from the service of the Archbishop of Salzburg, a position his father had worked hard to procure for him. Tired of the composer's lack of obedience, Count Arco, one of the archbishop's secretaries, told Mozart to "clear out -- scoundrel, cretin" and kicked him in the behind.

The insult left Mozart seething, but it also helped him formulate a conviction. "It is the heart that ennobles a man," he wrote to his father, "and though I am no count, yet I have probably more honor in me than many a count." The same year, he began work on "The Abduction From the Seraglio" (Die Entf&uuml;hrung aus dem Serail), a masterpiece of comic opera and the first -- of any -- to be peopled with emotionally rounded, flesh-and-blood characters. Both through the music and through the many alterations he made to the original slapstick libretto, Mozart presented his personal Enlightenment -- one that, far from utopian, centers on courage of conscience, personal dignity and forgiveness, yet also remains grounded in wit and presence of mind.

The opera, about the liberation of a group of European captives from a Turkish harem, had been commissioned for the new German National Theater in Vienna, an institution founded three years earlier by Emperor Joseph II in order to create an operatic tradition that could rival those of Italy and France. Before Mozart took on the genre, the Singspiel had been mere spoken theater with musical numbers inserted to liven up the action. In 1782, with "The Abduction From the Seraglio," Mozart raised it to an art form in which the glorious virtuosity of Italian song was fused with the expressive authenticity of the German lied -- where depth of feeling and rational thought created characters that were more real than any seen before in opera.

"Far too beautiful for our ears, my dear Mozart, and a monstrous quantity of notes," is the comment attributed to the emperor, who thus started a tradition of damning the piece with faint praise. The cultural critic Edward Sa&iuml;d, who saw racism in Western artists' treatment of oriental subjects, thought it was "more benign" than Verdi's "Aida." New York's Metropolitan Opera, which stages a handful of performances beginning tonight, advertises it as "a charming farce." But while the buffoonish harem guard, the hectoring servant girl and the lover carrying a ladder through moonlit gardens may be stock figures of comedy, Mozart subjects them to an emotional education from which they emerge as fully formed humans. And the confrontation with the Islamic world, far from reinforcing pre-existing notions of superiority, widens the moral compass of the European protagonists, who are enlightened as much by the Muslim ruler as they are by the women among them.

Belmonte, a Spanish nobleman, arrives at a Turkish court where he hopes to find Constanze, who together with her maidservant Blonde and Belmonte's own man Pedrillo had been abducted by pirates and sold into slavery. With the help of Pedrillo, he succeeds in entering the palace, though not without arousing the suspicion of Osmin, the belligerent harem guard and right hand of the powerful Pasha Selim. The pairs of lovers -- Pedrillo and Blonde are sweethearts -- are reunited but then apprehended in their attempt to flee. When it is revealed that Belmonte is the son of the Pasha's archenemy, their fate appears to be sealed -- Pasha Selim, however, gives them their freedom, choosing renunciation over revenge, the dignity of following his conscience over the honor code of his culture.

Only Osmin remains unchanged. He is the face of fundamentalist Islam: suspicious of outside influences, hypersensitive to slights on his honor, misogynistic. He is fond of gruesome violence: His favorite punishment consists of beheading, hanging, impaling, burning, flogging and drowning -- all of the above, in sequence. His notion of honor is collective and easily shaken.

But the Europeans are not morally superior, certainly not from the outset. Belmonte is plaintive and impractical; Pedrillo, fearful and unfairly jealous. Constanze is so depressed she can hardly get out of bed. Only when faced with the Pasha's threats of physical violence does she discover the heroine inside her, expressed in the spectacularly difficult "Martern Aller Arten." Her part echoed by a single oboe, flute and violin, Mozart here pushes the female voice to heights where it almost ceases to be human and becomes pure music -- an out-of-body ecstasy such as would allow a martyr to endure any torture.

The aria is not only necessary for Constanze to find her own voice. Pasha Selim, bewitched by her strength of character, reconsiders his threats and vows to win her heart. When he eventually renounces her, it is not because his rival is a more worthy man, but because Belmonte is the man Constanze has chosen with her free and brave heart.

The most luminous character of all is Blonde, who had been handed as sexual property to Osmin. When he tries to consummate the arrangement, she reads him the riot act. To Osmin's blustering "oh Englishmen are you not fools to leave your women their free will?" Blonde responds "A girl born into freedom will never allow herself to be ordered around like a slave/And even if liberty is lost/She remains duchess of the world." Her music is exquisitely phrased, simple according to the conventions that allow a character of her social standing only limited range, but rich with emotional depth and dignity.

The music of "Abduction" is brilliant and boisterous, written with the "gaiety and spendthrift youthfulness and warmth" Anton Webern described. The transitions from spoken dialogue to recitative and aria are organic to a degree never before seen in the genre, the action driven by the music. Critics have pointed to the excess of musical material as evidence of Mozart's creative genius getting the better of him. But while it is true that there is more melodic invention in some of Mozart's recitatives than in many a contemporary's symphony, the musical weight he accords a single moment such as that of three men fighting to get through a door, is what ties music and action so closely together.

The development of the Singspiel almost ended in its culmination. In the 19th century, composers like Carl Maria von Weber and E.T.A. Hoffmann would turn to it, as did Beethoven with his "Fidelio." The idea of a national German opera was subsequently hijacked by Wagner, who redefined what a "monstrous quantity of notes" might be. Mozart returned to the genre at the end of his life with "The Magic Flute." With its supernatural characters and freemason ideals, "The Magic Flute" is as utopian and abstract as "The Abduction" is fresh. By placing his characters in an oriental setting, Mozart reminds us that it is only in confrontation with an Other from whom we allow ourselves to learn that we can find our own voice and transcend prejudice. As we continue to renegotiate the encounter between East and West, we could do worse than allow Mozart to guide us.

Ms. da Fonseca-Wollheim is a writer living in New York.

Corrections & Amplifications

Due to an editing error in a previous version of this Masterpiece column "Mozart's 'Personal Enlightenment,' " the length for the spirited music composed for a small scene in "The Abduction From the Seraglio" in which three men are fighting to get through a door was given as 20 minutes. It was just over 2 minutes.

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